Make your own cheese at home, using natural ingredients
Anyone can make their own cheese. Whether you’re in the middle of a city, or on a homestead, you can make delicious cheeses in your home kitchen.
Making your own home dairy products was an essential skill in the past, and a skill that continues to create resilience and reduce food costs in the face of supply disruptions and uncertainty.
Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is the book I wish had existed when I started making cheese. Many cheesemaking books present recipes to be followed in exact ideal conditions which can be hard to achieve on a homestead. I’ve gone beyond this, making cheeses in less-than-ideal conditions, sharing the results, and explaining why each part of the cheesemaking process is done and how to make this work in home kitchen and homestead conditions.
I’ve included heaps of information on storing, handling, and working with the seasonal conditions of milk. Instructions for making your own rennet from animals and plants are included, along with information about how to prepare and use several different homemade cheese cultures.
There’s a section on cheesemaking equipment, and how to get started with the absolute basics, most of which can already be found in a typical home kitchen.
If you’re not sure where to begin, or how to fit cheesemaking into your life, there’s helpful information included about the best cheese recipes to get started with, and how to grow your cheese skills from there, along with figuring out which cheeses will work best with your lifestyle.
“Understanding the cheesemaking process” is a large part of the book where we look at every step of the cheesemaking process in depth, why each step is done, and what each step achieves, so that you can confidently come up with your own cheese varieties.
The ideal conditions for aging cheeses are discussed, along with various ways to achieve this at home. I also discuss many ways to work with rinds: working with natural moulds, encouraging (and discouraging) different types of mould, and natural options for making cheese without mould.
Many cheese styles are covered in the book, from the best kinds for beginners to start with, through to advanced cheesemaking.
Also included are recipes for other homemade dairy products: how to make the best thick and tasty yoghurt, kefir, cultured cream, butter, and ice cream.
Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is the ideal cheese book for homesteaders. 8×8” in size and around 140 pages, designed for practical use with every cheese recipe on a single-page spread and clearly written instructions to help you make your own beautiful cheeses at home.
The Nourishing Hearthfire 
Congratulations! What a huge undertaking that is, I look forward to checking it out! 🥳
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